1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a novel recording process and apparatus, and a recording medium in the same, and more particularly to a recording process and apparatus, and a recording medium in the same in which an area indicating a receding contact angle corresponding to a heating temperature is formed selectively or selectively and reversibly on a surface of a recording medium for which the surface exhibits specific properties, and moreover, relates to a recording method in which that area is supplied with a recording agent that includes a colorant for image appearance.
2. Description of the prior art
Offset printing method using printing plates without water (water for moisturizing) is a typical recording medium is divided into areas that have a liquid adhering to them, and areas that do not have a liquid adhering to them. However, in this offset printing method, it is difficult to incorporate all of the processes including the process for the manufacturing of the original plates and the printing processes from the plates (printing plates) into a single apparatus. This makes it difficult to have a compact printing plate apparatus.
For example, even in the case of relatively compact offset printing apparatus and the printing apparatus to be separate.
For the purpose of eliminating this fault of the offset printing method, there has been proposed a recording method and apparatus in which areas for liquid deposition and areas for no liquid deposition have been formed on a recording medium in accordance with image information and also in which the repeated usage of that recording medium is possible (i.e. the process is reversible). The following are some of these.
1 Water-soluble developing method
After a charge has been externally applied to an hydrophobic photo-electric layer, the medium is exposed and the surface of the photo-electric layer has formed upon it a pattern having both a hydrophobic portion and a hydrophilic portion. A water soluble developing solution adheres to only the hydrophilic portion and is transferred to a paper or the like. (Such methods and apparatus are disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 40-18992, Japanese Patent Publication No. 40-18993, Japanese Patent Publication No. 44-9512, Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No. 63-264392, etc.)
2 Method using the photo-chemical response of a photo-chromic material
In this method, ultraviolet light is irradiated to a layer that contains a material such as a spiropyran or an azo dye so that a photo-chemical reaction occurs to make the photo-chromatic substances hydrophilic and the like. (Such methods and apparatus is described in "Japanese Journal of Polymer Science and Technology" Vol. 37, No. 4 page 287 (1980).)
3 Method using the action of an internal biasing forces
This is a method whereby the portions where a liquid ink adheres or does not adhere are formed by the physical transformation of an amorphous substance and a crystalline substance on the recording medium. (An example of such is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No. 54-41902.)
According to the previously described method 1, after the water-soluble ink is transferred to the paper or the like, the hydrophilic portion is removed by removing the charge so that is possible to record other image information. This is to say that the one original plate (photo-electric body) can enable repeated printing. However, this method uses an electron transfer process as its basis and so requires a long process involving charging.fwdarw.exposing .fwdarw.developing.fwdarw.transfer.fwdarw.discharging so that there are accompanying problems with making the apparatus compact, in reducing its cost and in maintaining it.
With the method 2 described above, it is possible to freely control the reversibility of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties by selective irradiation of ultraviolet and visible light. However, since the quantum efficiency is very small, the response time is extremely long and the recording speed is slow. In addition, there is also the fault of image instability. This method has still not reached the level of practical application.
Furthermore, with the method 3 described above, the information recording member (the recording medium) that is used has stability after the recording has been performed but there are occasions that structural transformation occurs in the image recording member due to temperature changes prior to the recording. This is to say that the removal of the recorded information pattern needs a machine that applies a thermal pulse followed by rapid cooling so that is is difficult to perform frequent repetition of image formation.